Once I watched a woman transmogrify in a Reconstructionist synagogue because of a cookie.
This congregation excelled in creating seriously moving and transporting experiences that lit me up inside, even as they insisted that spiritual experience was ultimately rooted in culture and tradition, something intellectual and material. It was infuriating. Despite their ability to generate palpable, luminous oneness in their liturgy, the feeling turned to dust as soon as the service ended and people started talking to each other. This seems to play out identically in all traditions: outside the arena of the spiritual work at hand, there is a strong expectation to posture knowledge and alliances. One of the costliest costs of admission is to tacitly accept the agenda in which it is more important to suss people out, than it is to feel their quiet presence. Despite the genuine warmth, kindness, and generosity of so many of the people there, most conversations left me with a very familiar feeling of being in just another locker room of athletes where I didn’t belong.
After every service, this congregation gathered in a meeting room and feasted. No expense was spared, and there was always something beautiful to eat for everyone: bagels, breads, cheeses, salmon, salads, and pastries of all kinds. Finding a place to sit didn’t usually offer the same luxurious experience, because there was a vague, distinct feeling that impartial acceptance at just any table should not be presumed. Your table was a statement: choosing it was a political act.
Being new to the congregation, though, seemed to offer some room to boldly maneuver, even if it meant stepping out of line. Feeling the similar, relative safety of a puppy who trusts in its temporary impunity, secure that my bigger adult siblings would let me chew on their ears without murdering me, I took a deep breath and sat down at a table of people who, in hindsight, were probably just as terrified. My plate had a few glorious cookies on it, raspberry rugelach to be exact. These were not just any rugelach, these were from the best rugelach bakery in Toronto. These are rugelach you want to be buried with.
You might have noticed that my relationship with carbohydrates is deep and real. It is so much so, that when a student wrestles with the idea that notes do not themselves translate into music, I start by teaching them how to bake a potato.
On this day, I was deep in the revelation of my cookie when the woman sitting next to me smiled, maybe a little suspiciously, and asked:
“How’re the rugelach?”
I was a puppy after all, so I smiled back and said:
“They’re transcendent.”
She looked at me a little bit like an older sibling who just got her ear chewed on, but didn’t miss a beat. She got up from her seat:
“Well, I don’t do transcendence. But if I can get there with rugelach, I’m going to give it a try.”
What physicist David Bohm would characterize as the materialist, reductionist, mechanistic view of the universe would assert that combat is the only off-ramp from the fire-and-brimstone world I railed against in yesterday’s piece. Our experience of the universe is certainly material, but my adventures suggest the presence of a base reality that is responsive to feeling beautiful feelings. My first suggestion is to find what makes such beautiful feelings happen for you, and to feel and share them deeply and consciously.
On your way, find a potato. Make it an organic russet, a good-sized one that speaks to you, about 250g (9 oz). Do absolutely nothing to it. Put it on a metal sheet and put it in the oven at about 200C (400F) for 75 minutes. It might need a little more time, maybe less, but to check, gently squeeze the sides until you sense a softness that suggests something fluffy and wonderful is about to happen to you. Let it sit out for 10 mins, then carve it with a fork and knife, skin and all. Put a decent amount of butter on it — be generous here: the future of humanity is at stake. Salt it lightly, pepper it freshly and generously with the most fragrant pepper you can find. Before you experience perfection, take a moment to consider the possibility that you — illuminated — are about to mediate a shift in reality itself.